


10 things Murphy (mostly) knows about Connor, and 1 thing neither of them are really sure of

by jamnesias



Category: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Genre: Implied Incest, M/M, Twincest, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 09:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamnesias/pseuds/jamnesias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>6) Connor prays in Russian when he's angry, Latin when he's reticent, and Gaelic when he's pissed. He sometimes dreams in other languages, too.  When he dreams about work, about their day to day life, it's in French. When he dreams of waking Murphy up by biting the muscle along his inner thighs, it's in Italian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	10 things Murphy (mostly) knows about Connor, and 1 thing neither of them are really sure of

**Author's Note:**

> Excuse the shit title? Bit of a writing exercise: my personal headcanon for Connor.
> 
> Pre-movie, around when they're first in Boston (and yes this ignores the sequel entirely because it is DEAD to me).

 

* * *

  **10 Things Murphy (mostly knows) about Connor...**  


**1)**

Connor was an amateur (and very successful) bareknuckle boxer between the ages of 15 and 17. He kept it secret from everyone else, creeping back in at 3am with swollen knuckles and bruised mouth, black eyes, passing them off as fights with mates to Ma and then sharing the winnings with Murph.

Murph came and watched him a few times. Unable to look away.

He still curls himself forward when in a fight, the way he learnt. Rounding his wide shoulders off as if to make a point, like speech marks, framing his statement and intent.

**2)**

He threw up in the toilet on the plane to Boston. 

He leant over the sink, _hung_ against it with his elbows in the corners and his wrists on the taps, leant his head against the cool mirror, and closed his eyes.

**3)**

He's got _incredible_ aim with a gun/punch/paper aeroplane/even a slingshot when they were kids - but when his attention and his _scary fuckin' gaze_ (to quote Murph) (who actually loves it, _loves_ it, and gets a jealous burning feeling when it isn't turned upon him) isn't focused entirely on something, he can have poor spatial awareness.

In truth, he can be clumsy. He overcompensates when he's drunk, or cutting meat (so that he doesn't slice his fingers off), or shooting something, and this usually solves any problem. Since they’re at least merry most of the fuckin' time when they're not alone or at work, very few people have ever noticed that he can be... A little silly.

Not expansive gestures, not comedic, nothing stupid, but little things. He can't park straight for shit, though don't ever try to tell him. He will definitely trip over pizza boxes on the floor no matter how obvious they are, or he'll try carefully _not_ to trip on them and slip on a newspaper instead, land on his arse. And fling whatever he can reach at his brother when he laughs from the other side of the room.

He almost constantly has bruises on his shins, or his arm. That one is from the shower, whenever he turns to reach for the soap, or swears under his breath and stretches for the body wash, when he realises he's forgotten it on the side before coming in and starting the water - with eyes half-closed against the suds and foam running down his back. Every _fuckin' time,_ he bangs his arm on a pipe or a tile or something.

He'll hiss, turn his arm to look at it and then glance back, hair flat to his forehead, to see if Murph has noticed.

Murphy will have already used the sound as his cue to look away, so that he doesn't get caught watching.

 

**4)**

His neck and feet are extremely ticklish.

Murph went through a phase, when they first came to Boston, of quietly sidling up whilst Connor was sleeping – out cold from trying to get used to their new time schedule, but also there is the fact that Murph is more of an insomniac than Connor - and tickling them to wake him up. He'd sneak up, lower lip caught between his teeth, oh so oh so carefully reach over to scratch bitten nails against the pads of Connor's feet.

He’d always jerk and flail when he came awake, until the last time, when he kicked Murphy right in the mouth.

He claims this was _partially_ an accident.

It wasn’t at all.

(Just like Murphy would claim it wasn’t an excuse to find a new way to touch Connor, to reassure himself.)

(Just like Connor could pretend he didn’t spend too long looking at Murph’s bruised lips, afterwards.)

**5)**

He is an inch taller than Murphy - but everyone knows that, because he points it out at every fuckin' opportunity. Things he also has: 

  * A birthmark behind one knee
  * A chip on his canine tooth, on the upper left of his grin, from misapplication of beer bottle when he was trying too fast to get drunk at fifteen
  * A mouth inherited from their Grandmother - a fuckin' _sin_ on him



He also has, let’s be honest, cheekbones like a girl. Murphy told him that once, drunk, half-asleep as Connor manouvered him through their pitch-black apartment to drop him heavily onto his mattress and then bent down to yank the cover over his legs. He'd stopped, surprised, gaping at his brother, then snorted softly, raised his eyebrow in response and shook his as he stumbled away. Because look at his brother, features half-lit by moonlight from the thin window above as his head lolled back against his pillow, the light capturing on his cheeks, his gorgeous face.

Murph can hardly fuckin' talk, either.

**6)**

In the same vein as this, Connor got dressed as a girl once. It was by their mutual friends at a very, very drunken going away party. Not long before they flew to America, and it was a bet for fifty quid, which they needed: charm a girl whilst dressed as one.

Connor never turns down a bet. It isn't gambling, then, he reasons, because he knows he'll do it no matter what.

They gave him a purple skirt and tank top and a cigarette, ruffled his hair ( _girly enough already_ ) and gave him a pint, and then told him to get on with it.

To his credit, or disdain, he managed to pull. The girl had laughed at him initially, but then got caught up in his easy grin, his shrugs, his _fuck it_ attitude as he ordered one for her as well at the busy bar. The flex of his solid legs under the skirt, sprawled easy on the bar stool.

Murphy sulked for a _week_.

Connor wasn't entirely sure why.

**7)**

Connor gets natural, and extremely fuckin'  _blonde_ highlights, if he stays in the sun too long. Hints of the same colour that Murph used to be when they were kids - he was almost white-blonde before it turned black. When they were young they looked more similiar, but now Murph is dark and blunt and beautiful and Connor's hair has smudged and dirtied to this off-brown. The reminder of it when he looks in the mirror in the summer, whenever he catches glimpse of the bright bleached tips, is strange.

(Murphy loves it and can't say exactly why. Not in words. He loves that Connor changes, that he's affected by nature, by the weather, mercurial and predictable at the same time - something about Connor is so solid and so base, something aboiut him is the earth, the sky, is Murph's anchor and equilibrium, turns everything inside him, and it makes Murph wants to dig his fingers in and compare. It makes him laugh, bitter, silently, when Connor's hair curls so blonde and angelic, that his eyes can be that fuckin' soul-heaving  _blue_ , and yet his swearing is so filthy, his fighting brutal, his punches bruise so deep. That his body cause such twisted, dirty things, can make Murphy's ache and roar. It doesn't make sense. Only Murphy understands it.)

**8)**

He prays in Russian when he's angry, Latin when he's reticent, and Gaelic when he's pissed. He sometimes dreams in other languages, too. When he dreams about work, about their day to day life, it's in French. When he dreams of waking Murphy up by biting the muscle along his inner thighs, it's in Italian; his brother's favourite extra language, the way the words fall so soft and twisting and perfect from his lips, and fit so well with his gestures and his clever, expressive hands.

He has a recurring dream in Gaelic. Their oldest, deepest mother tongue. It's a nightmare, really. That Murphy isn’t his twin. That they aren’t even related - that Murphy isn’t real. He’s an imaginary friend from childhood, something that Connor made up and can’t let go of.

He has had this dream three times:

Once when they were nine and both had tonsillitis so badly that they couldn’t speak, couldn't say anything to each other, not even a _sound_.

Once after Murphy slipped in the shower and knocked himself out, just after they turned nineteen, and Connor found him, after sitting downstairs watching TV with a horrible, creeping feeling--

And the last time, on their second night in Boston, when he dreamed it worse.

Dreamed that with the plane journey, Murph had gone to ghostlike; turning thinner and paler and more transparent, until he faded away entirely. 

These are the only three times in Connor's life that he has woken up screaming.

**9)**  

He is really good with dogs and horses. Oh Christ, dogs. Dogs fuckin' love him, what the shit. 

But he doesn’t trust cats.

The reason: Connor is possessive, and protective, and silly. He is vicious, and a little masochistic, and soppy. He is gentle, and he is rage. He's generally always in a good mood and nothing really bothers him, save the obvious, but he tends to observe, to let others speak first, to let Murphy test and fuck about and play, and its given him the reputation of distance, of unpredictability. It's not untrue. Some days he just wants to watch cartoons and walk about the windy city, and make his brother laugh. Other days he loves it when they spark and kick and fight each other, because then he has his marks all over Murphy and that's as close as he can get, but he also hates it, hissing, wants to kiss every single bruise he's put upon him in regret, he wants to suck on his split lower lip until he  _whines_  and grabs Connor by the hips with his beautiful fingers--

But he won't.

**10)**  

A secret: he wants to get their birthdate tattooed down his left side. Over his ribs, by his heart. He wants this so that he can feel it when he  _breathes_  - but it is unlikely that he ever will. Inking it onto his skin is too public. Too blatant. He wants the tattoo, the pain and the truth,  _v e r i t a s -_ and the old fashioned part of him wants to make the statement, make the oath and promise clear - but then he'd want the ink to soak in. To disappear. Swallowed and protected. To get into his blood, to stain his bones. 

That's how close he wants Murphy. 

That's how close he  _is_.

Not next to him.  _Part_  of him.

One whole.

* * *

**...and One Thing Neither Of Them Knows, For Sure**

**1)**

Murphy actually came out 8 minutes earlier.

Things got complicated at the end; heartrates were spiking, struggling, and both of them were getting distressed with neither of them coming. It was looking towards emergency caesarean but then things changed and-- Murph was coming, was out, wailing like the obligatory banshee and still kicking. Then going abruptly quiet.

Connor took his sweet fucking time for another while. When he finally, finally came out he was silent. A little blue, too still. When they had cleared his lungs of gunk, just before they put him on oxygen, he suddenly tried to gulp twice and moved his head. He actually (gently) headbutted the nurse’s chin.

Two hours of oxygen later, he was opening his eyes to try and stare at Murphy. Who tried to stare back, for as long as was possible. This was for all of about 1.2 seconds, of course, and both of them looked like _drowned fuckin' kittens_ (to quote Ma).

The doctors joked that he’d had got sick of his brother and kicked him out for a bit of time alone.

Ma thinks they were already fighting in her fuckin’ womb, little bastards, couldn’t even give her peace before they were born – but Murphy won that one, 'ey?

The boys have a better idea.

When they finally learn the answer to their question, it won't seem as monumental as they think it will. They won't even be that surprised. They want to know, and yet never talk about these things together, never really theorise, just make grand statements, shove each other when people ask, then look away. They aren't sure how to put it into words. It gives them that feeling, that ache behind your navel, too far inside to follow or find. They know how it happened, really. Deep, deep in their bones.

It's impossible, but they can guess who might have got protective. It couldn't have happened, and yet, they can tell who would have pushed the other out, when things turned bad.

There’s a big difference between who is older, and who came out first.

Connor is the older brother.

He _always_ was.


End file.
